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Kooky
Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.
About Kooky and Shaka →Brisbane vendors who sold over the three months to August accepted a median of 4.2 per cent less than their asking price, against 2.8 per cent a year earlier, according to the Monthly Housing Chart Pack that Cotality published on 10 September 2026. The city's median selling time over the same three months was 35 days, up from 19.
The chart pack is the first of Cotality's monthly releases to show the full effect of winter on how homes are selling in Queensland's capital, as distinct from what they are worth. Its headline is about the top of the Sydney and Melbourne markets. Its most useful page for a Brisbane seller is a different one: the finding that, in the mid-sized capitals, no price bracket has been spared.
Cotality, Monthly Housing Chart Pack, September 2026, published 10 September. Discount and selling time cover the three months to August; listings cover the four weeks to 6 September.
What the chart pack reports
Cotality's chart pack gathers the firm's monthly measures in one document: values, sales, listings, selling times, discounts, auctions, rents and lending. Two of those measures speak directly to anyone with a home on the market.
The median vendor discount is the typical gap between the advertised price and the sale price of homes sold by private treaty. Across the combined capital cities it reached 4.2 per cent over the three months to August, which Cotality's summary of the pack describes as the highest since January 2023. A year earlier the capital city figure was 3.0 per cent. Nationally, the median discount was 4.0 per cent.
Median time on market counts the days from first advertisement to sale. Nationally it stood at 39 days over the three months to August, compared with 28 days a year before. The pack's commentary puts it this way: selling conditions continue to lose momentum.
Related readPool safety certificates when selling a Queensland homeBrisbane's own readings are 4.2 per cent and 35 days. On the discount the city now matches the combined capitals exactly, having sat below them a year ago. On selling time it remains quicker than the national median by four days, after a year in which its median almost doubled.
Source: Cotality Monthly Housing Chart Pack, September 2026. Median days on market over the three months to August of each year.
From 2.8 to 4.2 per cent in a year
The speed of the change in Brisbane is what separates it from the larger capitals. A year ago a Brisbane vendor conceded less than the capital city norm: 2.8 per cent against 3.0 per cent. The city's discount has since widened by 1.4 percentage points, while the combined capitals' figure has widened by 1.2 points.
The monthly sequence shows how quickly the gap has opened nationally. Cotality's July chart pack, published on 16 July, put the combined capitals' discount at 3.6 per cent for the three months to June. Its August pack, published on 14 August, recorded a national discount of 3.8 per cent and a national selling time of 35 days for the three months to July. One month later those national figures are 4.0 per cent and 39 days.
A worked example gives the scale. Take a home advertised at $1,000,000, an illustrative figure chosen for round numbers. At a discount of 2.8 per cent it sells for $972,000, which is $28,000 under the advertised price. At 4.2 per cent it sells for $958,000, or $42,000 under. The difference between the two outcomes is $14,000, on the same home and the same advertised price, a year apart.
The figure is a median, so half of the Brisbane sales in the period involved a larger concession and half a smaller one or none. It also records only completed sales. A home that is still advertised, or has been taken off the market, is not in it.
Related readPreparing the seller disclosure statement: what a Queensland seller gathersQueensland's advertising rules give the figure a particular meaning for homes marketed with an "offers over" price. The Office of Fair Trading's guidance says that figure should be the minimum the seller is willing to accept when the advertisement is published. A sale below it is not a breach: sellers are free to change their minds as a campaign goes on. A widening discount is a measure of how often, and by how much, they are now doing so.
Every price bracket is falling
The chart pack's headline finding concerns where in the market values are falling. In Sydney and Melbourne, the most expensive homes have led. Cotality calculates that upper-quartile house values, the dearest quarter of the market, are down 10.7 per cent from their peak in Sydney and 10.5 per cent in Melbourne, well beyond the falls in cheaper brackets.
Brisbane does not follow that pattern. Cotality's summary says that in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth the falls are more evenly distributed across value segments, with less than one percentage point separating the quartiles. Cotality's head of research, Gerard Burg, described how the downturn began elsewhere: "Early in the cycle, falling home values were largely confined to higher-priced properties in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra."
For a Queensland seller the distinction is practical. In Sydney, an owner of a mid-priced home can reasonably think of the downturn as a prestige problem that has not fully reached their bracket. In Brisbane the pack offers no such comfort and no such alarm: a unit in the outer suburbs and a house on the river are moving in roughly the same direction at roughly the same pace. The pack records Brisbane dwelling values down 1.0 per cent in August and 2.7 per cent below the record high set in May, while still 10.8 per cent higher than a year ago.
Related readPropTrack counts 22 per cent more new Brisbane listings than last JuneMore homes to compete with
The pack counts listings over a rolling four weeks. In the four weeks to 6 September, Cotality recorded 34,486 new listings nationally, 3.1 per cent fewer than a year earlier and 6.4 per cent below the five-year average. Its commentary says the slowdown may signal a cooler start to the spring selling season.
Total listings tell the opposite story. Just over 139,100 homes were advertised nationally in those four weeks, 18.1 per cent more than a year before and 2.2 per cent above the five-year average, after spending the first part of the year well below it. Cotality attributes the rise to weaker buyer demand and longer selling times, with stock accumulating as a result.
Brisbane stands out on both counts. The commentary groups it with Perth and Adelaide as capitals where new listings rose over the year, in contrast to Sydney and Melbourne, and it adds a caution: the rise comes from a very low base. The pack shows Brisbane's total stock more than 50 per cent above its level of a year earlier, among the largest increases of any capital. A year ago Brisbane had unusually little for sale, which is part of why the percentage is so large.
A large percentage rise in listings starts from a very thin market
Brisbane's stock was exceptionally low in the spring of 2025. A rise of more than half from that level brings the city closer to a normal market, not necessarily beyond one. The five-year average is the steadier yardstick.
Fewer sales and a weak auction market
The other half of the equation is how many homes are finding buyers. Cotality counts 2.7 per cent fewer sales nationally over the year to August than over the previous year. Capital city sales were down 5.2 per cent, while regional sales rose 1.8 per cent.
Auctions give a weekly reading of the same thing. The pack puts the combined capitals' average clearance rate over the four weeks to the end of August at 49.5 per cent, and notes it has been under 50 per cent since early June. Brisbane's four-week average was the lowest of the capitals, at 32.8 per cent.
Most Queensland homes are sold by private treaty, so the auction figure describes a minority of sales. It matters to every seller as a signal all the same: an auction is the one setting where buyer competition is counted in public, and for three months it has been thin.
What comes next
Cotality publishes the chart pack once a month. The October edition will cover the three months to September and will be the first to include a full month of spring. Its listings counts are updated weekly in between, and the commentary's suggestion of a cooler start to the season will be tested by whether new listings climb through September and October as they usually do.
Until then the pack leaves Brisbane sellers with three numbers that belong together. Homes are taking 35 days to sell where they took 19. The typical concession is 4.2 per cent where it was 2.8. And there are more than half as many homes again to choose from as there were last spring. Each on its own could be read as a seasonal wobble. Together they describe a market in which the asking price has become the start of a conversation again.
Kooky, from Shaka
Kooky edits Queensland Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for Queensland property professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.
